Supreme Court Justices Illustrated Biographies

Book Description: The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies 1789-2012, Third Edition provides a single-volume reference profiling every Supreme Court justice from John Jay through Elena Kagan. An original essay on each justice paints a vivid picture of his or her individuality as shaped by family, education, pre-Court career, and the times in which he or she lived. Each biographical essay also presents the major issues on which the justice presided. Essays are arranged in the order of the justices' appointments. Lively anecdotes along with portraits, photographs, and political cartoons enrich the text and deepen readers' understanding of the justices and of the Court. The volume includes an extensive bibliography and is indexed for easy research access. New in this edition are: a foreword by Chief Justice John G. Roberts; a revised essay on Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist; updated essays on sitting or recently retired members of the court; new biographies for Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel A. Alito, Elena Kagan, and Sonia M. Sotomayor; an updated listing of members of the Supreme Court with appointment and confirmation dates; and an updated bibliography with key sources on the Supreme Court and the justices. For insightful background and lively commentary on the individuals who have served on the Supreme Court of the United States, there is no better reference than this updated new volume. This is a vital reference work for researchers, students, and others interested in the Supreme Court's past, present, and future.

The first single-volume reference to provide in-depth biographies on all the Supreme Court justices from John Jay through Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. These even-handed and accessible profiles describe each justice's background, formative experiences, career, and the major issues and cases on which they passed judgment.

The Supreme Court grew out of an historic opportunity to interview all of the living Supreme Court justices for a C-SPAN feature documentary about the Court, the only time that the nine sitting members and their retired colleagues have granted interviews to a single television network. Eleven of those interviews—the entire current court, including the newest member, Justice Elena Kagan—are gathered here in this singular collection. In their conversations with the justices, Brian Lamb and Susan Swain bring readers into a fascinating world to which few have had access. Chief Justice John Roberts talks about the role of the Court in society, his role as chief justice, and the process of deciding cases. Justice Stephen Breyer takes us on a private tour of his chambers and describes the differences between the Court and the Congress. And new Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan reflect on their first impressions of the job. Through these encounters, the justices’ personalities, intellects, and devotion to the Court emerge. Enriching this material are Mark Farkas’s interviews with journalists, court historians, and other experts on the Court. Reporters Joan Biskupic and Lyle Denniston discuss the Supreme Court in action and the impact of a new member of the Court. Clerk of the Supreme Court William Suter illuminates the traditions of the Court. Historian James O’Hara discusses the Supreme Court building and its history. Former Solicitor General Drew Days III and attorney Maureen Mahoney describe the experience of facing the justices in fast-paced oral arguments. The Supreme Court offers readers a rare window into the nation’s highest court through the eyes of those who serve there. It is absorbing reading for anyone interested in this vital and powerful institution.

Offers brief biographies of the men and women who have been appointed to the Supreme Court and discusses important cases they have decided.

In a meticulously researched and engagingly written narrative, Brian McGinty rescues the story of Abraham Lincoln and the Supreme Court from long and undeserved neglect, recounting the compelling history of the Civil War president's relations with the nation's highest tribunal and the role it played in resolving the agonizing issues raised by the conflict. Lincoln was, more than any other president in the nation's history, a "lawyerly" president, the veteran of thousands of courtroom battles, where victories were won, not by raw strength or superior numbers, but by appeals to reason, citations of precedent, and invocations of justice. He brought his nearly twenty-five years of experience as a practicing lawyer to bear on his presidential duties to nominate Supreme Court justices, preside over a major reorganization of the federal court system, and respond to Supreme Court decisions--some of which gravely threatened the Union cause. The Civil War was, on one level, a struggle between competing visions of constitutional law, represented on the one side by Lincoln's insistence that the United States was a permanent Union of one people united by a "supreme law," and on the other by Jefferson Davis's argument that the United States was a compact of sovereign states whose legal ties could be dissolved at any time and for any reason, subject only to the judgment of the dissolving states that the cause for dissolution was sufficient. Alternately opposed and supported by the justices of the Supreme Court, Lincoln steered the war-torn nation on a sometimes uncertain, but ultimately triumphant, path to victory, saving the Union, freeing the slaves, and preserving the Constitution for future generations.

In the first Supreme Court history told primarily through eyewitness accounts from Court insiders, Clare Cushman provides readers with a behind-the-scenes look at the people, practices, and traditions that have shaped an American institution for more than 200 years. Each chapter covers one general thematic topic and weaves a narrative from memoirs, letters, diaries, and newspaper accounts by the Justices, their spouses and children, court reporters, clerks, oral advocates, court staff, journalists, and other eyewitnesses. These accounts allow readers to feel as if they are squeezed into the packed courtroom in 1844 as silver-tongued orator Daniel Webster addresses the court; eavesdropping on an exasperated Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in 1930 as he snaps at a clerk's critique of his draft opinion; or sharing a taxi with future Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005 as he rushes home from the airport in anticipation of a phone call from President Bush offering him the nomination to the Supreme Court. This entertaining and enlightening tour of the Supreme Court's colorful personalities and inner workings will be of interest to all readers of American political and legal history.